feminismand feminist
art- Especially since the late 1960s, when the feminist
art movement can be said
to have emerged, women have been particularly interested in what
makes them different from males — what makes women artists and their art different
from male artists and their art. This has been most prominent in the United States,
Britain, and Germany, although there are numerous precursors to the movement, and it has spread to many other cultures since the 1970s.

Feminists point out that throughout
most of recorded history males have imposed patriarchal
(father-centered) social systems (in which they have dominated
females). Although it is not the goal of this article to recount
the development of feminist theory
in full, the history of feminist art cannot be understood apart
from it. Feminist theory must take into account the circumstances of most women's lives as mothers, household workers, and caregivers, in addition to the pervasive misconception that women are genetically inferior to men. Feminist art notes that significant in the dominant (meaning especially Western) culture's patriarchal
heritage is the preponderance of art
made by males, and for male audiences,
sometimes transgressing against females. Men have maintained a
studio system which
has excluded women from training as artists, a gallery system that has kept them from exhibiting and selling their
work, as well as from being collected by museums — albeit somewhat less in recent years than before.

Here is a notice posted by the Guerrilla Girls (founded in 1985, a New York based group of otherwise unnamed women "artists, writers, performers and film makers who fight discrimination") in a list they published in 1989:

The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist:

Working without the pressure of success.

Not having to be in shows with men.

Having an escape from the art world in your 4 free-lance jobs.

Knowing your career might pick up after you're eighty.

Being reassured that whatever kind of art you make it will be labeled feminine.

Not being stuck in a tenured teaching position.

Seeing your ideas live on in the work of others.

Having the opportunity to choose between career and motherhood.

Not having to choke on those big cigars or paint in Italian suits.

Having more time to work when your mate dumps you for someone younger.

Being included in revised versions of art history.

Not having to undergo the embarrassment of being called a genius.

Getting your picture in the art magazines wearing a gorilla suit.

Feminist art
history must be considered as part of this discussion. Its proponents
have demanded that women's arts from all cultures, of all periods, be included in studies
and exhibitions of art. In 1971 Linda Nochlin (American, contemporary art critic) wrote a landmark article, "Why Have There Been No GREAT Women Artists?" giving tremendous momentum to feminist scholarship concerning women in the arts. Numerous histories of women artists were
published in the 1970s, and several others have appeared in the years since then.

Before the late 1960s most women
artists, struggling to participate in the male-dominated art world,
had overwhelming disincentives to put feminist meanings into their
work, and sought to de-gender their art. Often, on the basis of appearance
alone, their work could not be identified as woman-made. Several countercultural movements
arose simultaneously with feminism in the 1960s. At this time
the United States experienced social upheaval coming with the
Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, economic prosperity, the
arrival of oral contraceptives, reforms in the Catholic Church,
nostalgia for the presidency
of John F. Kennedy, and experimentation with psychotropic drugs.
Many other countries experienced social unrest of various kinds
during this period. Some gender
issues have been of interest to both male and female artists.
Although feminist art has arisen more from the concerns of artists
of one gender, and some of those concerns are sexual in nature,
more often than not feminist issues have been about women's power
in arenas of which sexuality (reproductive acts and roles) is
an important part.

Feminist art sometimes poses or
confronts such questions as:

How is a woman's gaze different from a man's?How does that difference influence the ways in which the two genders view the world? And how they view art?

What constitutes obscenity and pornography? Where do they come from? What are their results? Are they always transgessive? What place do they have in art?

Although feminist artists have
shown great interest in the depiction of nudefigures (both male and
female), few feminist artists have shown interest in creating
erotic work. Nancy Burns, professor of political science at U of Michigan, differs with this assertion. She points to, "Carolee Schneeman fuses project. Tee Corrinne photography, Katie Niles - Jill Posener - Emma Bee Bernstein - I could go on...." (From a November 28, 2008 email message Burns sent to the author.)

Burns takes further exception to the construction of this page: "It's really a problem to set up a list of artists that are 'feminist' when the only thing all of them share is a vagina - these kind of assumptions of lumping women together simply because they're women is everything that's wrong with feminist thinking today. [See a note regarding Agnes Martin below.] This is also why the Guerrilla Girls' bedside companion is terrible. Most pages simply state whether or not an artist is a lesbian - what does her sex life have to do with her art? Why all biography and no substantive analysis of their actual work?
Also there are many male artists that would call themselves feminist artists. Are they not allowed to care about gender issues because they have penis?" Indeed!

Gabriele Münter, Boating, 1910, oil
on canvas, Milwaukee Art
Museum, WI. Münter portrays herself with the oars of the
boat, her back to the viewer, as Kandinsky stands above fellow
painter Marianne von Werefkin, and a son of Alexei Jawlensky,
another painter — all participants in the group known as Der Blaue Reiter.

Katharine Newbury (American, 1878-1973), Bookplate for a Woman, c. 1904, ink on paper, Michael Delahunt collection. Drawn in the style of Art Nouveau, this bookplate bears this text: ". OLD WOOD TO BURN . OLD BOOKS TO READ . OLD FRIENDS TO TRUST ." A space has been left on the ribbon at the center of the design for the name of the owner of the book: " - Her Book." Having graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1902, Katharine Newbury pursued a career as a graphic designer. She produced many letterheads and monograms, and illustrated at least one book, a cookbook. She also designed household objects, including a pair of wrought iron firedogs; and she painted a number of pictures in watercolor. Newbury married George Manierre III in 1906. They had five children. Virtually all of her extant artworks predate that year. One of her children — Samuel Manierre (1908-1988) — became an art historian and teller of tales, and one of her grandchildren authors the Web site you are looking at.

Here is how you can print Katharine Newbury's bookplate on adhesive paper for your own use: Insert "full sheet labels" into your computer's printer. Avery brand labels, product #8165 for ink jet printers, can be purchased either from a local office supply store or online. On each 8 1/2 x 11 inch white sheet you will print eight 2 x 5 inch bookplates. Make your prints in one or both of these sets of colors: in reds, blues, and browns or in greens, pink, and violets. These are "PDF" files that you can open with the free Acrobat Reader (version 4 or later).

Lee Krasner, Free Space, 1975-1976, colorsilkscreen print with collage, 49.7 x 66.3 cm (sheet) inches,
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA. Lee Krasner
married Jackson Pollock in 1945, but they separated shortly before
his death because of his affair with another woman. Krasner's
works were not considered important until late in her life, Pollock's
reputation dominating hers. See Abstract Expressionism and New Deal art.

Agnes Martin (American, born Canada, 1912-2004), Untitled, 1952, watercolor and ink on paper, 11 3/4 x 17 3/4 inches (29.9 x 45.3 cm), Museum of Modern Art, NY. Nancy Burns, professor of political science at U of Michigan, said, "Agnes Martin, on multiple occasions, made it clear she did not want to be regarded as a feminist artist because it inflicted far too much narrative baggage into her paintings. she wanted her art to stand on its own and be taken seriously as an artist on her own merits. she rejected the labelling as minimalist as well. She actively did not want to be a posterwoman for the women's movement." From a November 28, 2008 email message Burns sent to the author.

Judy Chicago has worked in a variety of media, including several craftstraditionally associated with women, including embroidery and painting on porcelain. She is best known for The Dinner Party, a sexually explicit installation with a group of craftswomen. It pays tribute to 39 notable women and their historically significant contributions to civilization, along with the names of 999 lesser known women. In later works, she has explored subjects including childbirth, the Holocaust, and women's perceptions of men. She is the founder of the Women's Art Education collective. See pseudonym.

Jenny Holzer (American, 1950-), Untitled, installation of 21 LED electronic
signboards, 1990 Venice Biennale and Guggenheim Museum, NYC.
"In an enclosed room, these very active signboards surround
the viewer, flashing messages in a welter of languages. Selected
from the artist's Truisms, Inflammatory Essays, and other writings,
the "reports" that appear on her signboards . . . voice
diverse, often controversial opinions, in statements such as
'people who don't work with their hands are parasites' and 'murder
has its sexual side,'" said Jon Ippolito, the Guggenheim's
exhibition coordinator.

Guerrilla Girls, Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum? 1989, advertisement. Asked to design a billboard for the Public Art Fund in New York, the Guerrilla Girls submitted this design. The PAF said it, "wasn't clear enough," and rejected it. The Guerrilla Girls then paid to post it on NYC buses, until the bus company canceled the lease, saying that the image, based on Ingres' famous odalisque, was too suggestive and that the figure appeared to have more than a fan in her hand.

Guerrilla Girls, The Trent L'Ottscar, a billboard at Highland and Melrose in Hollywood, CA, March 1-31, 2003. A fundamental goal of feminism is to promote the success of women in roles of power that have long been assumed primarily by men. This huge poster is aimed at the largely male leadership of the American film industry. It was posted very publicly at one of Hollywood's busiest intersections. An Oscar — the awards given annually by members of the American motion pictures industry — here has the head of a leader of conservatives in the U.S. Senate, Trent Lott — making this award a "Trent L'Ottscar"!

See further notes about the Guerrilla Girls in the "Related Links" section below.

Carrie Mae Weems (American, 1953-), From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried, 1995, a series of chromogenic color prints with sand-blasted text on glass, of which this is one, 42 x 31 inches, Museum of Modern Art, NY. The artist selected nineteenth- and twentieth- century photographs of black men and women, from the time they were forced into slavery in the United States to the present, then rephotographed the pictures, enlarged them, and toned them in red. Each photograph is framed under a sheet of glass inscribed with a text written by the artist, evoking the layers of prejudice imposed on the depicted men and women. See postmodern African American art.

Frank Schroder's Crowd of Women (detail of 26 portraits exhibited at American Gallery, NYC, in 1998) is an ongoing collection of 150 plus portraits of women painted from 1909-1959. Collected over several years from flea markets, thriftshops and cheap auctions, the former painter gives them a social tag by calling them a "collective." Whatever the theoretical intent, the result points toward individuality.

"I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat."
Rebecca West (pseudonym of Cecily Isabel Fairfield) (1892-1983), English novelist.

"One distressing thing is the way men react to women who assert their equality: their ultimate weapon is to call them unfeminine. They think she is anti-male; they even whisper that she's probably a lesbian."
Shirley Chisholm, (1924-), American, member of the US House of Representatives.

"In my heart, I think a woman has two choices: either she's a feminist or a masochist."
Gloria Steinhem (1934-), American feminist writer.

"A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men."
Gloria Steinhem.

"Any student of women painters therefore
finds that he [sic] is actually studying the female relatives
of male artists . . . Women artists before the nineteenth century
seldom expressed their own creativity: they adopted modes of
self-expression first forged by integrated, self-regulating (male)
genius, most often when they were already weakened by eclecticism
and imitation . . . Until the nineteenth century liberation from
the overwhelming and ubiquitous artist father would also have
meant the cessation of all technical training."
Germaine Greer (1939-), Australian-American author. The Obstacle
Race: the fortunes of women painters and their work (1979).

"Feminist art is not some tiny creek
running off the great river of real art. It is not some crack
in an otherwise flawless stone. It is, quite spectacularly I
think, art which is not based on the subjugation of one half
of the species. It is art which will take the great human themes
— love, death, heroism, suffering, history itself — and render
them fully human. It may also, although our imaginations are
so mutilated now that we are incapable of the ambition, introduce
a new theme, one as great and rich as those others — should
we call it 'joy'?"
Andrea Dworkin (1946-), American feminist critic, "Feminism,
Art, and My Mother Sylvia," in a speech, April 16, 1974,
at Smith College, Northampton, Mass; published in Our Blood,
chapter 1, 1976.

"A natural response is to change the word feminist to a word with fewer stigmas attached. But inevitably the same thing will happen to that magical word. Part of the radical connotation of feminism is not due to the word, but to the action. The act of a woman standing up for herself is radical, whether she calls herself a feminist or not."
Paula Kamen (1968-), American journalist, feminist author and playwright.

ArtLex links to other websites
consistent with our mission to expand knowledge of contemporary
and historical art and visual culture. We believe these sites
represent the range and diversity of such sites on the Internet,
but their inclusion on our list does not constitute an endorsement
by ArtLex, nor is the list intended to be comprehensive. We hope
it will serve as a departure point to websites that are resources
concerning feminist art, and we welcome your suggestions for other
possible links.

Behind
the Mask is a Website magazine
on Gay and Lesbian affairs in Africa, based in Johannesburg.
See its arts and culture section.

"The official site of the Guerrilla Girls: fighting discrimination with facts, humor and fake fur since 1985."

"The Guerrilla Girls, established in 1985 and still going strong in the 21st century, are a group of women artists, writers, performers and film makers who fight discrimination. Dubbing ourselves the conscience of culture, we declare ourselves feminist counterparts to the mostly male tradition of anonymous do-gooders like Robin Hood, Batman, and the Lone Ranger. We wear gorilla masks to focus on the issues rather than our personalities. We use humor to convey information, provoke discussion, and show that feminists can be funny. In 17 years we have produced over 80 posters, printed projects, and actions that expose sexism and racism in politics, the art world and the culture at large. Our work has been passed around the world by kindred spirits who we are proud to have as supporters. The mystery surrounding our identities has attracted attention. We could be anyone; we are everywhere.” This is from the Guerrilla Girls site.

Lesbians in the Visual Arts:
an international network for dialogue about issues in contemporary
art as well as issues specific to being a lesbian in the visual
arts.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts presents art and arts education that emphasize
the diverse artists and communities of the San Francisco Bay
Area. Presentations by local, national and international artists
serve to engage audiences in Visual Arts, Performing Arts, Film/Video
and Education Programming.

Vernita Nemec (aka Vernita N'Cognita) is a contemporary American visual artist, some of whose work is performance art, who has been active in the feminist art movement since at least the early 1970s. She is also an exhibition curator. Her website offers information about her, her work, and her feminist perspectives.

Painter Alicia DeBrincat lives in California. Her site presents a portfolio of her work, cv, statement, bio, press, prices, contact, more. She titles her portolio "The Culture Corset," and says, "Barraged by slang and symbols or alone in the dark, women attempt to navigate contemporary culture's conflicting expectations of them."

The
Bra Ball is about a giant ball
of thousands of brassieres, created by Emily Duffy and contributing
women.

An article in a 1955 issue of the American magazine Housekeeping Monthly urged women to follow a list of suggestions it called "The Good Wife's Guide" for improving their husbands' nightly return home. The last of these gems: "A good wife knows her place."